Murder trial: Mother’s last moments captured in haunting 911 call

ROCKFORD — Leslie Byrd’s final desperate gasps for survival as her then 25-year-old son stood over her with a black semi-automatic assault rifle were captured during her tortured call to 911 at 7:14 p.m. on May 22, 2009.

ROCKFORD — Leslie Byrd’s final desperate gasps for survival as her then 25-year-old son stood over her with a black semi-automatic assault rifle were captured during her tortured call to 911 at 7:14 p.m. on May 22, 2009.

The voice on the recording is difficult to understand. But there is little doubt jurors at Franklin T. Byrd’s murder trial heard the pain and confusion in the woman’s last recorded moments.

Byrd killed his mother one shot at a time. He told detectives during a taped interrogation how he had used a rifle and a .45-caliber Colt pistol to shoot his mother starting with the legs and then the stomach and then the head.

When he thought he heard her breathing after dragging her body into the kitchen, he shot her again. She was found with a dozen gunshot wounds. Her abdomen was sliced open with a knife after she was already dead.

Jurors had several choices for their verdict as Byrd’s murder trial drew to a close. They must sift through roughly 70 pages of jury instructions and decide whether Byrd is guilty of first-degree murder and other crimes, not guilty, guilty but mentally ill or, as the defense argues, he is not guilty by reason of insanity.

Deliberations began around 7 p.m. Wednesday.

This is not a “who done it,” Winnebago County prosecutor Pamela Wells told jurors Wednesday.

When Byrd exited the house an hour later and surrendered to police who had heard gunfire and evacuated the surrounding neighborhood, he told them: “I shot my mom,” Wells said. “He admits he shot his mother.”

Court appointed public defender Margie O’Connor said Byrd was increasingly isolated and disturbed in the days before the slaying. Byrd’s paranoid mind had been convinced his mother was trying to hurt him, she said.

When Leslie Byrd reached into her purse after a hard day of work that night, Byrd was convinced she was reaching for a gun, O’Connor said.

“His mental illness caused him to believe his mother was going to kill him,” O’Connor said. “It is totally illogical to kill this person who does everything for you. But he had a psychotic break.”

O’Connor pointed out that Byrd told detectives multiple times that he thought what he was doing was in self defense and that after he saw his mother reach in her purse, he blacked out. Byrd tended to repeat and adopt things detectives told him into his narrative of what happened — more evidence, O’Connor said, of his mental illness.

And she cited the findings of a mental health expert as more evidence he was criminally insane at the time of the killing. She argued that Byrd is schizophrenic and suffered a psychotic episode when he killed his mother.

Page 2 of 2 - Prosecutors argued Byrd is guilty of first-degree murder. And they argue he killed his mother in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner.

Not guilty by reason of insanity would mean that mental illness prevented a defendant from knowing what he was doing was wrong. The defendant would be acquitted but could be committed to a mental institution after a review by the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Guilty but mentally ill would be a finding that he was mentally ill at the time of the offense but not to an extent that Byrd couldn’t understand that what he was doing was criminal and wrong. It would also mean that Byrd would receive mental health treatment when sentenced to the department of corrections.

But Wells told jurors that Byrd wasn’t crazy when he killed his mother.

He was angry, she said.

“Leslie was a hard working woman who took care of her kids,” Wells said, hoisting the rifle used to kill her and pulling the lever with a click-clack. “She wanted him to get a job and have a successful life. ... He was angry. He had enough.”